Thirty bikes in total were donated by Academy Sports + Outdoors to Middle Valley Elementary. Academy communication specialist Shane Carlisle said the bike donation program will gift over 4,000 bikes to young students across the country this year.
The whole of Middle Valley Elementary congregates for an assembly to give away the new bikes. Middle Valley principal Allyson DeYoung said the excitement, nervousness and disbelief in each of the students when their names were chosen was palpable.A donation from Academy Sports + Outdoors means that five students from Middle Valley Elementary School went home for the holidays with one of the most momentous gifts a young child could ask for: a new bike.
A raffle was held Dec. 9 at the school to see which students would win the bikes. Principal Allyson DeYoung said students who were noticed doing something generous, encouraging or kind on their own had been rewarded with raffle tickets in the weeks preceding the giveaway.
The five students who won won’t be the only big winners, though. Academy Sports + Outdoors donated 30 bikes and helmets in total, and DeYoung is planning to give away another five every month when the new school semester begins in January.
“We want to motivate kids to want to be here and be a positive member of the community,” said DeYoung.
Though the winners won’t always be based on good deeds, she said. One month, the raffle could be based on attendance; another month, it might be determined by the number of books read in the school’s reading program.
However the school proceeds, each raffle will be part of a larger program that DeYoung has implemented school-wide to encourage students to not only want to come to school, but to want to help one another once they’re at school.
Bryan Roldan is a fourth-grader at Middle Valley who won one of the bikes given out last week. He said he’d earned a ticket when he noticed a classmate looking lonely and sitting by himself at lunch. Roldan went over and sat with the student to try to make his lunch better, explaining that he knows it isn’t fun to sit by yourself at lunch.
“At first he wasn’t my friend, but I’d talked with him before on the bus,” Roldan said. “I’m friends with him now.”
Anika Perry, a third-grader, said she’d gotten her ticket by cleaning up a mess from another table after lunch. When asked why, she said she thought it would be helpful to the lunch ladies and she didn’t want to make their jobs harder.
Fellow third-grader Harmonee Bulloch did something similar, picking up after some other students.
“You’re not supposed to leaves messes at lunch,” said Harmonee. “It’s against the rules.”
For many of the students who won, the raffle prize was their first bike ever. Kindergartner Rodney Fox said he was looking forward to learning how to ride it at nearby Vandergriff Park.
Chris Cortney is the manager of the Academy Sports + Outdoors on Highway 153 which donated the bikes.
“This year I thought Middle Valley would be great since Ganns went away and merged with Falling Water,” Cortney said of the store’s annual donation, which goes to a different school each year. “Really, we just want to reward the kids in the school however the school sees fit to give the bikes out.”